


Mirror, Mirror

by Trobadora



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Gen, Moriarty's final problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-14 20:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13597305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: There's been a pane of glass, thick and shatter-proof and anti-reflective, between Eurus and the world, all her life.- Those infamous five minutes, and what must come after.





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ANGSWIN](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANGSWIN/gifts).



Jim, outside the glass. Eurus, behind the glass. Outside/inside - all an illusion. No: the glass is a mirror. She sways; he sways; they reflect each other. Their eyes are on each other. They see.

Jim Moriarty smiles, wide. His eyes are alight. Eurus knows everything he can observe on her body, on her face, in her prison behind her. She knows everything that _can_ be deduced from it, and she knows he sees it all.

He sees her, and he is _delighted_.

On his body, his face, in his background she's observed and deduced and tracked down, she can see even more. He burns too brightly, burning himself out. He grasps for diversions, sinks with despair into inevitable boredom, sees far more clearly than anyone she's met what is ahead of him.

Despair and boredom, yes, but not now. He looks at her, and for a moment, there is joy.

Eurus looks at him and feels: which one's this? It churns in her chest, bursts bright, bursts bitter. Jim would have a name for it. She doesn't ask.

But something inside her _wakes up_.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There's been a pane of glass, thick and shatter-proof and anti-reflective, between Eurus and the world, all her life. She stands outside, apart, cannot touch - can move the world like pieces of a puzzle, arrange it into an image of her will, but it remains a puzzle, not a life.

All mirrors are blind for her. Nothing reflects her, as she reflects nothing. Not with her parents, when she was small. Not even with Sherlock, no matter how hard she tried. Certainly not with Mycroft, who looks at her, but never sees. There is nothing there. Nothing, too, when any other person stands before her.

Eurus is singular: alone.

But now: Jim - the glass - Eurus. And the glass is the axis along which they are reflected onto each other.

Mirrors only reflect so much: a section of the spectrum, a section of the world. But that small section, reflected in his eyes, in hers, bouncing between them in infinite recursion, is more than she has seen mirrored back at her before.

She had hoped.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Eurus is alone. Jim is not.

He believes - observes, deduces, _knows_ with every glittering facet of his mind, sharp and bright and beautiful -that he is not, that he and Sherlock are the same. 

She wants him to be right. If he is, perhaps she stands a chance.

  
  


* * *

  
  


She sees in Jim, too: death, soon, coming and welcome.

The dullness of life encroaches more each day, as diversions more and more clever bring less and less reward. Eternal boredom threatens, and he has planned and plotted his escape.

He doesn't say, but Eurus knows: Jim means to take Sherlock with him, means to go out on a win. That's not allowed. Sherlock's part is still coming, after all.

But if Jim is right, and if _she_ is right - if Sherlock is who and what they hope him to be, each in their own way, as they do - he will find a way out.

It's a test, an experiment she's running. She has plans, but she had plans before, and Sherlock never wanted to play the game she set before him, never saw the pieces fallen down the well, or read the rules in her song.

She won't leave him a choice, this time. If he passes the test.

Jim, though: Jim won't find another way, won't even try. He'll grant himself deliverance, finally, after all.

She could stop this. Eurus can see exactly which buttons to push, in his mind. She thinks perhaps that is what cruelty means: to take such a yearned-for thing away, for the mere sake of _keeping_ him somehow.

And she'd have to shatter the mirror to do it. He would reflect nothing of hers, after that. She would reflect nothing of his.

She won't.

She is not cruel enough for this. She is not selfish enough. Or is it selfless? She never could tell the difference. - No; she'll be his revenge instead, after - as he, in death, will be her instrument.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Five minutes: it's only a start. Soon after, Jim sends her a video, the first of many: "Did you miss me?"

She knows it's meant for Sherlock. She knows it's also meant for her. And for him: a little joy on the way out.

Jim's path is set now, clear ahead, determined. She sees it in his eyes, sees it with him, sees it coming. She wonders what he sees coming for her.

Sweet Jim. She will miss him, indeed. He looked at her and saw, and in his eyes, she saw herself reflected.

He saw her, and if he could, perhaps so will Sherlock, in the end.


End file.
